


*Dad Voice* Son,

by politebotanist



Category: South Park
Genre: Emetophobia, Gen, M/M, he's not even in this but please know that every kyle I ever write is trans, just know he's out there in this universe Transing it Up, stan is very bi and randy tries his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:43:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politebotanist/pseuds/politebotanist
Summary: "So Stan grows up and realizes he's got feelings for Kyle, but he's gone his like whole young adult life not knowing that Asian girls don't actually decide who's gay and who's not. So Randy has to be like 'nah son it's your own fault sorry my being PC resulted in you being an idiot for like 7 years.' That's the whole fic right there. The end."- the exact text I sent my best friend to describe the premise of this fic.





	*Dad Voice* Son,

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the first thing I've written since all the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fanfic I wrote in the fifth freaking grade. It's hard to jump back out there, and I've never been good at sharing my work anyways. Ugh. Fuck it. Just fuck it. Stan's like 17 in this just for the record.

Randy comes down the stairs. He’s running late; he missed a button in the middle of his shirt, and his hair’s still wet this morning. Shelley’s already left for school. He grabs a banana off the bunch in the bowl on the counter, and checks the big white board calendar to make sure he’s not forgetting anything important. He leans down to where his wife is sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the paper and gives her a quick kiss good-bye, and another quick one on the cheek because he thinks she looks cute in her reading glasses. 

“Stanley’s staying home from school today, he’s not feeling well. I think he caught some stomach bug going around school,” she says before looking up, “Would you pick up a bottle of ginger ale for him on your way home?” Randy nods as he closes the door behind him.

\-   -    -

He walks in the door exhausted, holding his lunch box and a plastic grocery sack in one hand, and unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt with the other. He sets his lunch box down on the table, and puts the two liter bottle in the door of the refrigerator while also grabbing himself a bottle of beer out of the bottom drawer. He pulls one of the four chairs out from the table fair enough that he can sit at it, slouched back at almost a comic angle, legs pushed out. 

His wife is leaning against the counter in her kitchen, wearing a red t-shirt and a pair of old sweats, arms folded across her chest. Oh, shit. 

"Dammit, Randy, what the hell did you tell our son?" 

He blinks at her, not knowing exactly what it is she’s referring to, only knowing that he is, for sure, fucked. He twists off the cap on his beer and sits up a little.

“You remember how Stanley used to get those vomiting spells when he had a crush on the Testaburger’s daughter as a kid? WEll, that’s why he stayed home today,” Randy nods, following just fine at the moment. He pulls the bottle up to his mouth. “Except now he says he’s got them over Kyle Broflovski.” Randy slams his eyes closed with the pain of carbonation and liquid he’s just snorted out of his mouth and up into his nose. 

“ _ And _ ,” Sharon says, much more firmly, “he’s been in absolute hysterics about it all day because he is  _ convinced _ this is happening to him because ‘Japanese girls picked him to be gay, liked they picked Tweek Tweak and Craig Tucker.’ He says that  _ you  _ told him that’s how it happened. So do you want to tell me why our son is hyperventilating over the gay equivalent of the damn stork, or do you want me to keep flying blind here?” 

Sharon should be in bed. So should her husband. Their son should know that Japanese tween girls don't decide who is and isn't gay. None of those things are happening. Instead, she's looking down at her husband, waiting for an answer in silence, other than her husband's deep and deliberate nose breathing and the sound of her son sobbing between dry heaves from the bathroom upstairs.

"Oh Jesus, Sharon, what the fuck was I supposed to say?" Randy says from behind where his hand is pinching the bridge of his nose. He’s thrown himself back into a slumped position. "You were the one who wanted me talk to him in the first place! And I was PC back then! I just wanted to seem like I knew what the hell I was talking about." He sets the beer in his other hand down so he can lean forward again to cradle his head. "You tell me the right way to respond when a 10-year old boy asks you how Asian girls decide who's gay and I'll do it, but you weren't there. What the hell was I supposed to tell him?”

“You were supposed to tell him the truth, Randy.”

He feels the same kind of unprepared he did when Stan launched this at him originally. He slides his hand down rocking it against the stubble on his face.

“I had to improvise, okay?"

"Well, your improvisation had a severe impact on who he is now, so you're going to go upstairs and fix it." Randy watches from the chair as his wife takes herself to their room. He's going to have to move sometime. Finally he grabs his beer again and heads up the stairs too. Randy grabs the bannister because he might as well get support from fucking someone in this house, and he starts putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually he does end up at the bathroom door. It's closed, but not locked. He reaches for the doorknob, but after hearing more retching, decides it might be better to knock first. 

"Hey son, can I come in?" 

The sink runs for a second before Stan breathes out a shaky, "Yeah, dad, sure."

He cracks the door open to find Stan sitting on the ground, knees scrunched up, and arms propped on his legs and against the toilet bowl. Randy steps in a little further while Stan wipes tears from his eyes. They're a combination of those tears you get from the force of vomiting and the teenage emotion that caused him to stay home from school that day. Jesus, this is going to be harder than he thought. Randy sits down on the edge of bathtub.

“Stan, your mom says you’re having… some relationship issues,” he tries not to wince, and it’s not because he’s homophobic; it’s not that at all. It’s that he doesn’t want to fuck this up any more than he already has. “These things happen though. I mean, your mother and I were the best of friends before we started dating,” but he doesn’t have time to finish wherever it is that thought was going before Stan loses his shit again.

“No, Dad, you don’t get it, okay?! You two got to have some cute adorable bullshit romance and you did it of your own fucking accord. You knew somewhere that it was even a possibility! It was your choice! If even a little bit it was your. Fucking. Choice.” He’s practically spitting this at Randy, but he has stop because he’s taking these huge, guttural pants just to get the breath for every new word. And now Randy can’t tell where the dry heaves stop and where the sobs begin but either way Stan’s covered in tears and he’s gagging so hard Randy thinks he might choke so he gets up, goes down stairs, and he gets his son a glass of cold water and himself another beer because this is going to take another beer.

When he comes back up, Stan has his arms crossed over his legs, his forehead resting on his forearms as he tries to hold back those weird breathy cry hiccups. While his head is still tucked in between the his legs, hidden by the faded, unwavering, smiling faces on his old Terrance and Phillip pajama pants, Randy takes the hand towel off of Stan’s neck and dampens it again. He places it back down at the nape of his son’s neck as he sits back down and twists open the new beer. 

He takes a sip. “Son,” he says as he begins to pick at the label. He spits it out, level and matter of fact, “Japanese girls don’t actually decide who’s gay.” Stan starts a question- it’s probably “what”, but to be fair it could also be “why.” It’s probably not “when.”- but before Randy can definitively find out, Stan’s face is back in the toilet bowl. He’s shaking, and his fingernails are clutching and scraping at the smooth porcelain that isn’t doing anything but bruising his knuckles when they slip from the force of grasping. This time, Randy does audibly and visibly wince because I’m sorry, throwing up is just fucking awful. Seeing his son like this is worse. Knowing it might be his fault makes him want to puke too.

Stan flushes and settles his head with a soft thump against the wall; he grabs the glass of water and slides his hands around in the cold condensation, if only to have something to hold onto. He’s breathing in that way you do when you're nauseous, where you’re trying to somehow breathe without triggering your gag reflex even though your uvula is in the middle of your goddamn throat. He keeps his pupils looking upwards, trying to blink away tears through his dark, wet lashes, before finally gaining what composure he needs to turn to Randy and glare at him, with tired, scalded eyes, what is definitively “why?”

Randy takes another small swig. He looks at the label he’s still scratching at. “Stanley, I’m sorry,” he tries to look up as his son but now he’s doing that thing where it’s that same “why” face but there are just accompanying lines of tears consistent down Stan’s cheeks. Fuck looking at that because my god, this poor boy. Randy points his head back down at Stan’s bare feet and his own work shoes, and his beer, and the beat up tile, and the threadbare shag bathmat. He keeps staring.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I mean I’m sorry you didn’t eventually figure out that it was a lie, but that’s another thing. Shit, no that’s not it. What I mean is, I’m sorry that my need to seem smart hurt you like this,” he takes a chance and looks back up, but Stan stares back with the same expectant face he had before. Fuck. Stan knows Randy’s full of shit and he’s still looking up at him like he has all the right answers. Head back down.

“Stanley, I know I’m not the best dad. But I wish I was. And when you came home with a question I thought I could answer, but then you threw me that curveball? I wanted to still have an answer. But I fucked up. I really fucked up.”

Now when he looks back Stan looks, I don’t know, sincere? Soft? But the point is at least the tears have stopped for a moment, thank god. 

“And it’s fine if you’re gay. Or bi. Or whatever. But just know that’s you and not some fucking Asian middle schoolers. And if you like Kyle that’s cool!” Randy just says Kyle’s fucking name and Stan’s ears go hot, and his chest starts heaving. He’s breathing through his nose real fast, like that time they found Clyde Donovan stuck at the bottom of a mailbox when he was forgotten playing hide and seek that one time. Oh shit, he started crying in fucking hysterics right after that part. Randy starts talking as fast as Stan’s breathing, “And it’s fine if you’re all ‘no homo’ too! I just want you to know that you have a choice,” he starts to trail off and ramble a little bit, “I mean, being gay isn’t a choice, but like, it’s your choice to act gay. Fuck, I mean, it’s not a choice, but it’s especially not the Japanese’s choice. Do you get what I’m saying Stan? Stanley?”

When he shakes that train of thought he looks up to see that Stan’s not sobbing, he’s whimpering. He’s holding his head in his knees again and jesus, he just sounds broken. 

He looks up, scared, and desperate, and pleading. He keeps it together long enough to say, “He’s my best friend. Dad, he’s my best fucking friend,” he wipes roughly into his t-shirt sleeve and, I swear to god, his lip actually quivers when he pulls his face back out. Randy’s not sure exactly what his son is asking, he just knows that he needs an answer and he needs it not to be bullshit this time around. He just doesn’t know which one of them needs it more. 

He scrunches the slick, sort of but not quite paper pieces of beer label into the palm of his hand. “Son, do you really think you love him?” Stan throws his head against the wall with a louder thump this time, and nods, eyes scrunched tight, tears streaming unforgivingly. He nods like he can’t say it enough; like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t. He nods like he’s been waiting his whole life for someone to give him an outlet to say, “Yes, I love Kyle Broflovski.” I mean, shit, I guess he has. 

“Well, then it doesn’t matter who the hell wants you to love him, it just matters that you do,” Randy’s not sure if someone can speak with both conviction and uncertainty at the same time, but if one can, that’s what’s happening. “That boy, is kind, and... he’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Randy winces, this time at how much he sounds like A Dad. But he thinks this is supposed to be what he’s saying? “But hey,” Stan opens his eyes and stares not at, but into Randy, “this is going to hurt like a motherfucker. And that’s best case scenario! You’re gonna miss him all time time, and you’re gonna hurt when he hurts. If you really love him, it’s gonna blow hair goat ass like half the time.” Stan mumbles something through his partially smiling, partially gritted teeth. Randy raises his eyebrows and gives Stan a, “hmm?”

“It already does,” Stan enunciates. He whimpers? Or maybe he’s doing that thing where you’re just so distraught the only response is just breathy, disbelieving laughter? Either way, Randy looks at him with as must sincerity as he’s ever had.

“That means you really love him then.” He smiles, and Stan gives his best smile back. This time, they both laugh. Not like a “haha” laugh, but like a “holy shit” laugh. It’s less sound, and more incredulous air. They both take a sip of their respective drinks. Randy holds the lip of his beer out; Stan clinks it softly back with his glass. 

They both sit in silence- with the exception of a few more breathy smiles and a couple astonished head shakes- until after a few minutes, Stan digs the heels of his palms into his hands, takes a deep breath, and rocks his weight forward to stand up. Randy takes a cue from his son, gives the bathroom a quick double hit of air freshener, and walks out behind Stan.

He crawls into bed and settles sideways, falling into place as the big spoon behind his wife. He smiles into the back of her neck, because he couldn’t remember the last time he really reminded himself how lucky he was to fall asleep wrapped around his best friend. Shit, he couldn’t really think of the last time he remembered that Sharon was his best fucking friend, too. After a minute, the door cracks open, giving way to the light in the hallway showing Stan’s silhouette. He’s grabbed The Vomit Bowl for the night, just in case. 

“Good night, Dad. I love you,” Stan says, punctuating with another soft, audible smile.

Good night, son. We love you too. No matter what,” Randy says, turning his head slightly. 

Stan pulls the door shut behind him, turns out the hall light, and pads on the old carpet down the hall to his bedroom.

Like a fucking homo. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm @gayward-vagabond on tumblr and my South Park side blog is @transbroflovski if anyone wants to hit me up
> 
> \- R.


End file.
